Yesterday, the Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks traded Dustin Byfuglien and a bunch of extras, to the Atlanta Thrashers for a couple high draft picks. The deal was widely — and instantly – panned as awful for ATL, as it should be, because despite his playoff heroics, Big Buff isn't exactly a 30-goal scorer, and first- and second-round picks are a lot to cough up.
Not too much though, for Atlanta, where years of awful decisions don't get you fired, but get you promoted instead.
The trades sounds even worse when you consider that the draft picks Atlanta moved to Chicago are the same picks they got from New Jersey in exchange for their former superstar Ilia Kovalchuk. When you consider the two moves together, the Thrashers essentially traded a 45-50 goal scorer – not to mention team captain and face of the franchise – for Byfuglien, Ben Eager, Johnny Oduya, Niclas Bergfors and a prospect who didn't even finish his last junior season because he attacked a guy.
Basically an all-star for spare parts.
And after hearing that, I think the trade with Chicago was summed up best by Chris, who said to me yesterday:
"Wow, that's like when we were kids and I traded your best hockey card for 25 shitty ones."
And you know what? It's exactly like that.
When we were kids, one day when I wasn't home, Chris traded my Ed Belfour rookie card – which at the time was probably worth $10 bucks (big money in a kid's world) – to some neighbour kid for a stack of shitty commons. I was not very happy.
Come to think of it, I still haven't forgiven him.
What a dick.
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